At any rate, while I didn’t fear for Charles’s life the way I would have just fifteen years earlier, I still feared for his happiness. Would he find someone who could love him, someone who wouldn’t be afraid? Implicit there was the addendum: afraid like I am. Charles was familiar with these fears; he’d made it clear, years earlier, that he was terrified of sleeping with HIV-positive guys. Now that he was positive, he was plagued with the question of finding love. Who would take him if he wouldn’t take himself?

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